FAITH AND POLITICS: FLESH AND BONE

The Reverend Dr. Lillian Daniel

March 9, 2008

First Congregational Church, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, UCC

www.firstconge.org

630-469-3096

Introduction to the Scripture:

Today we are going to hear a reading from the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel. He is a man who is best known for his startling vision in which bones come together to form skeletons, which in turn become flesh and come alive – but first, who was the prophet Ezekiel and what was the historical context in which he wrote?

In the book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel is mentioned only twice by name, so we mostly know him by his prophecies that were later recorded in writing; in other words, we know him by what he said, rather than what he did. Who he is remains much of a mystery. The prophet Ezekiel lived in the 6^th century before Christ, so he lived over eight thousand years ago. Ezekiel was a priest, of the Jewish faith, at a time when they had priests, and Ezekiel’s name means “God will strengthen.” He was one of the Israelite exiles, who settled at a place called Tel-abib, on the banks of the Chebar, “in the land of the Chaldeans.”

Ezekiel spoke when many of the Old Testament prophets spoke, at a time in history when the Jewish people were in captivity. Their nation, Judah, had been destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. So, Ezekiel was one of many important Old Testament prophets who wrote from a position of exile. He was forced to live as a minority in another country in a culture that was not his own.

Some of the most magnificent Biblical writings come out of this kind of social, political and religious hardship, a sharp reminder that both Judaism and Christianity began as religions of the underdog.

So Ezekiel’s prophecies gave assurance to the Jews that although they were for the time being in exile and under humiliation for their religious beliefs, they would eventually return to their land permanently and be able to practice their faith without fear. Ezekiel believed, because God had assured him of this, that the Israelite people would come back to life, like bones, that reunite as skeletons and then become flesh. The nation would be repaired, as miraculously as dry bones becoming a live body again.

Scripture: Exekiel 37:1-14

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, 'Mortal, can these bones live?' I answered, 'O Lord God, you know.' Then he said to me, 'Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.'

So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, 'Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.' I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.

Then he said to me, ‘Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.’

Sermon:

When Ezekiel lived in exile, there was a tyrannical ruler of the country in which he lived, King Nebuchadnezzar who demanded that the Jews living in his land bow down to his idols. He, as the leader of the state, called upon everybody to do this, but by doing so, he was requiring that the Jewish minority, and other religious minorities, bow down before something they did not believe in. The king was calling upon the exiled Jews to turn their back on their own God and worship the state religion instead. And I can almost hear the king saying to them, “And you know what, if you don’t like it here, go home.” But the Jews no longer had a home. Exile was it.

Ezekiel’s vision, about bones becoming enfleshed and then coming to life is a scary image – but the Jewish people would have seen it differently. Remember, since this is from the Old Testament, it is a Jewish text, first and foremost, and Jewish scholars have long debated its meaning.

Some think it is a resurrection vision. Six thousand years before Christ, the Jewish people believed in a day when all the dead would be resurrected, and that is still a part of their tradition. So, on the one hand, this was a resurrection vision. Things are bad now, but one day in eternity, they will be better.

Other people think that this vision really happened, that Ezekiel was describing something that he had actually seen: people coming to life before his very eyes. If so, who were the people being brought back to life? One theory is that the tyrannical ruler, King Nebuchadnezzar, had carried the beautiful young Jewish men of Judah to Babylon, and had them executed and their bodies mutilated, because their handsomeness had entranced the Babylonian women. Some believe that, in this passage, it was these good looking young men of Judah whom Ezekiel called back to life. That would leave thousands of Babylonian women singing “My boyfriend’s back and you’re gonna be in trouble.”

But most people believe that this was a prophetic vision that God sent to Ezekiel to give encouragement to the Jewish people. A promise that after all they had suffered, as bad as they felt – like dried up old bones with no life – there would come a day when their vitality would be restored, as surely as flesh wrapped around a skeleton becomes a real human being.

It is this meaning I would like to explore with you today, in what will be an Old Testament meditation upon the relationship between faith and politics. First, a caveat.

It is impossible to discuss faith and politics without actually talking about politics, so I have to go to some real life examples here. I do so not in order to take sides politically, but in order to examine a relationship that intelligent people of faith should be thinking about. Whatever your political party or whatever your religion, the relationship between faith and politics affects us all.

An example: News came from our state capital that on Tuesday of last week, House lawmakers in Springfield reversed the decision made last fall to require students in public schools to take a moment of silence at the beginning of the day. The same group that had voted for the moment of silence, had apparently now changed its mind.

I asked my daughter about the moment of silence at her junior high school and she explained it thusly: “We stand up to say the Pledge of Allegiance, but before we say that, we have about ten seconds of silence. It’s really annoying.”

“What are you supposed to do with those ten seconds?” I asked.

“Reflect on the activities of the day,” she replied, eerily repeating almost verbatim the language of last fall’s state legislation which read, “silent prayer or the silent reflection upon the anticipated activities of the day.” She had picked up on the part after the word “or” but apparently missed the part about prayer.

“Does anyone in your class pray?” my husband inquired. “Do you use that time for prayer?”

“Ten seconds?” she replied, “while we’re standing there waiting to say the Pledge of Allegiance?”

To which, I thought, “She’s got a point.”

This group of Illinois lawmakers, after hearing complaints that the moment of silence was poorly thought out and basically unenforceable, reversed their decision. Recognizing the issue as a drain on the energy of the school system as people fought about it (energy that might be better devoted to education), the House determined that the moment of silence question was not as simple as it had seemed at first. So, 33 House lawmakers, split fairly evenly between the two parties, switched positions. Apparently, the moment of reflection required more reflection than they had originally given it.

Faith and politics. An age old struggle.

Our religious forebears wrestled with these questions, just as we do. When the Puritans came over to the United States, long before we were the United States, they were in search of religious freedom. They had lived in a country that had a religion supported by the state, but it was not them. In England, the Church of England, the Anglican church, was the state religion, and the Protestant Puritans, who would later be called Congregationalists, were not free to practice their faith, as the minority. They were, in England, like resident aliens, granted some rights but not all rights. It cost them to practice their faith, and they were not pampered by the state or by the government. So, they traveled across the Atlantic ocean with a dream that they could live more freely.

As soon as they settled in New England, they set up churches that were instead called “meeting houses.” These churches were, in fact, also the seat of government in the town. Now that the formerly oppressed Puritans were on top, in the towns where they landed, you had to be a white, male, and a land-owning member of the Congregational Church in order to vote in town government elections. Church and state were now merged, perhaps more so than they had been in England. It was as if the Puritans had forgotten what it was like to live in exile, to be resident aliens.

It may surprise you to hear that that is our history, given that today our church is at the forefront of efforts to sustain the separation of church and state. We are also leaders in promoting interfaith dialogue, and advocating for the rights of all religious people in this nation. Well, we came to that later, in fact it was forced upon us by people like Thomas Jefferson who believed that a separation between church and state would be better for both. It has been, by the way, at least better for the church.

In England, for example, where there is a state church, only a tiny percentage of the population worship there or anywhere. For American churches, that separation forced the Congregationalists to do grassroots evangelism, and ended up causing a boost in attendance. Today, the massive variety of churches and their vitality remain a hallmark of American religion, in large part because we do not have a state church.

There was a moment in our church’s history, when we wanted to be a state church, a moment of triumphalism, that reminds us that nobody has a permanent claim on righteousness. Perhaps it was just the enormous relief of finally getting out from under religious oppression in England that led the Congregationalists to dream of Christian nation. When they said “Christian nation,” they meant “Christian like us” or “not like you,” which is what “Christian nation” always means.

I do not desire to live in a so-called “Christian nation.” I do not desire it, not for political reasons, but for Biblical ones. That’s because within our scripture, there is a healthy tension between faith and politics that instructs us not to fuse them together, but also not to separate them entirely. In scripture, there is a healthy back and forth between the two, as there is in life.

Scripture is clear on this. We are called to make our faith our first allegiance, because our allegiance to Jesus and his teachings transcend all human boundaries, including those of nation states and governments. So, to imply that there could be a “Christian nation” stops way short of what I believe, which is that the whole world belongs to God anyway. So, to use an idea from the 3^rd century, from Saint Augustine, we are called first to be citizens of the kingdom of God, and our citizenship to earthly kingdoms takes a distant second place.

The 146^th psalm reminds us, “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.”

What that means is that if everyone else in your local kingdom, your country, your village, be it Babylon or Chicago, if people around you believe that is their first allegiance, and you are seeing yourself as part of a heavenly kingdom that includes everybody, well, you’re going to feel some tensions. You’re going to feel like you don’t belong. You’ll be called, “Not one of us,” or “heathen,” or sometimes “unpatriotic” or just “weird.” You’ll feel like a “resident alien,” to quote the theologian, Stanley Hauerwas, and his book of that same name. You’ll feel like an exile.

It is hard to live in exile; but ultimately, that is what it means to follow God first, and human beings second.

Even when the human beings are telling you that they are following God, or that they are working on behalf of the state out of a religious vision, and “why won’t you just come along?,” your faith is calling you in a different direction.

That is the lesson of the Old Testament prophets. Over and over again, they found themselves literally in exile, living in lands and under rulers who did not respect their Jewish faith. In fact, the rulers were threatened by it. So again and again, the Jews were asked to bow down to idols, to the religions of their day, to show they were normal, to show they fit in.

People who take their faith seriously do not always fit it. It is hard to live in exile as a person of faith, but it may be the way that faithful people are supposed to live.

Personally, I seldom feel like a person in exile. I live comfortably, I am free to worship as I choose in a country that guarantees that right to all. I am fortunate to be a citizen and I can vote my conscience. In other words, on the world’s scale, I am hugely privileged.

There are ways in which I do at times feel like an exile. I feel that way when Christians speak about wanting to have a “Christian nation” that I, as a Christian, want no part of.

I feel like an exile when my religion is ridiculed, as it has been in recent months with all the attention given to a certain political candidate’s church, which also happens to be my church. Here, of course, I refer to the presidential candidate from our denomination and our state, Barak Obama, who, no matter how you feel about him politically, has become the perfect case study for the struggle between faith and politics.

When Fox news repeatedly stated that Barak Obama’s membership at one of our denomination’s largest churches, Trinity, in Chicago (a church attended by many, including Oprah Winfrey), his participation in our particular piece of the body of Christ was characterized as his being a member of an “all black and racist” church, I felt exiled, because I knew that wasn’t true.

I knew that our own Illinois Conference minister, Jane Fisler Hoffman, a white woman, held her membership at Trinity, which is indeed predominantly African American, but not racist. I also knew the pastors there: both Jeremiah Wright, now retiring, and his successor, Otis Moss, who is a guest on the television show I host, a fellow graduate of the same divinity school I attended, an appreciated colleague and truly a bright light in the church. I also knew that this predominantly African American church, within a predominantly white denomination, is the most generous giver to the UCC in the entire Illinois Conference. So, to hear Obama’s church described as racist and extremist gave me a hint of what it would feel like to be in exile.

Then as I considered my reaction, it gave me a smaller hint of what it might feel like to be an active member of a Christian church, but to be constantly asked if you are Muslim, over and over again, all because of having a middle name from another land. You’d feel like an exile.

That gave me an even more distant hint of what it would feel like to actually be Muslim in a country where that is considered a deal breaker for so many voters. You’d feel like an exile.

Finally, in the last week, came word on all networks and newspapers that our denomination is being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service for jeopardizing our tax-free status by allowing Barack Obama to speak before ten thousand members at our regular bi-annual General Synod and 50th anniversary celebration in Hartford, Connecticut last summer.

Invited long before he was a political candidate, Obama spoke to our convention as many other famous members of the church had, as a person of faith. I was there to see these events, as were Pastor Seth, and Oliver and Merlyn Lawrence, from our church.

As Lynn Redgrave had spoken at that same event of her journey as an actress, a cancer survivor and a devoted member of her church, just as Bill Moyers spoke at that event about his work as a journalist, his love for his UCC church and his vision for the world, just as you all, when you offer your testimonies here at church, weave together your faith, your stories about us in this community and your callings in the world, so Barak Obama spoke to us last summer about his own journey to the Christian faith as an adult, his conversion, about his church, his pastor, and how his faith had affected his work. It was, I can assure you, truly a testimony, and not a political rally.

Then to hear, not soon after that event nine months ago, but at this moment, this explosive moment in national politics, our church was being investigated by the IRS, gave me cause once again to recall that life in faith can sometimes feel like life in exile. That is not a bad thing.

Rest assured, my sermon today is about the tricky relationship between faith and politics, an age old struggle with no easy answers, as our Illinois law makers have recently realized, as have many of our presidential candidates: from Barak Obama, to Mitt Romney, to Joe Lieberman, to John F. Kennedy, to Mike Huckabee. Ezekiel wrestled with faith and politics. Our Puritan forebears wrestled with it.

Jesus wrestled with it, saying on the one hand, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” but on the other hand, refusing to bow down before King Herod’s commands and ending up on the cross, in the death of a common criminal, leaving his followers, the early Christians, well outside the bounds of petty respectability – which is where we should be.

When it comes to faith and politics, we’d do well to return to the image from today’s scripture to understand the complexity of the relationship. Politics alone, the back-and-forth of political warfare, or political power once it is established, is like dry bones that have no life. Our faith, our principles, our beliefs, is like the flesh that covers those dry bones and gives them life.

It would be absurd to say that, as individuals, our faith should be separate from our politics, because our faith should inform how we live and love in the world, on either side of the political aisle.

As a society, when politics kidnaps faith, or seeks to control faith, or to prohibit faith, or to enforce faith, we run the risk of losing our religious and our political edge. We run the risk of mistaking the skeleton for the flesh, of too closely identifying political power with God’s power – until we’re back making the same mistakes our Puritan forebears did, when they wanted the church and government to be one, as long as it was their church.

What scripture suggests about faith and politics is a healthy tension, in which individuals bring their faith to all they do, whether it is banking, teaching, parenting or politics, that people of faith remember in the end, we are exiles in our earthly kingdoms, with our allegiance first to the kingdom of heaven. As exiles, we will occasionally feel the sting of persecution.

Today, if they were out persecuting Christians, would they have enough evidence to convict? Do you ever feel that your faith calls you to take a risk? To refuse to bow down before powers that everyone else seems happy to fawn over? Does your faith ever make you feel like you don’t fit in, even with people who claim to share your faith? Do you ever feel that you are in exile?

If so, good. You stand in a great Biblical tradition. You are the flesh that brings life to dry bones.